


A Song About Forever

by failsafe



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 09:30:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6000967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missy thinks a thing or two about a girl led by a certain person's drumbeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song About Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy this fic! I tried to do what I thought were some Gallifreyan things about tense-shifting, and I hope I didn't mess anything up as a result.

When she had chosen that girl from Blackpool with the sad story about her mum dying and the commitment to the lives of children who weren't her own, it had been a matter of practicality. Capable of time-travel, capable of survival and regeneration, and capable of a lot of dastardly planning, there had really been nothing to do but to search and to wait for the perfect girl. It was always the girls – the human girls – with him. 

Clara Oswald had come to him – no, she had been brought to him – at a time in his life when there would have been very little one of his own kind would have had very little effect on him. The killer of the Time Lords, the extinguisher of things that should not be, the man who had learned to murder when the cost was high enough – little things, folding and thickening until they became an avalanche. A Time Lord had not been what he needed, and a Time Lady had certainly never seemed his style. Clara Oswald's appearance hadn't been taken into great consideration with the package as a whole, but with her unchanging, constantly subtly aging face, there had been those big, doe eyes and that little plea – drawing him back from a precipice they both had it in their blood to draw near. A ledge that, well,  _ she _ would never have been very good at drawing away from. Always a little closer, a little deeper, a little darker, perhaps until there might be a light at the end – a beautiful, mad thought that she had never been able to shake, even once she was free of the infernal drumming in her head. 

The Master had always been a better  _ Time Lord _ than the Doctor. There was a certain sense of control someone carrying around the title of a physician lacked. The realization that the Doctor's timeline had unraveled, would unravel, was unraveling was no difficult thing to discern for Missy when she had found her way back into the universe proper. Their universe. It was what to do about it that was the tricky part – unraveling timelines could unravel ever and ever more violently. 

Clara Oswald had been the solution. One Clara Oswald, a human girl from the country the Doctor so very much liked to visit – cold and damp and with that children's cooking show that was one of the few redeeming features to its otherwise very poor cuisine. She was like the perfect spark to start a fire that would burn through anything that stood in the Doctor's way. She was a good little pilot light and a force of nature, as she was called to be. 

Missy had never particularly understood his absolute preoccupation with humans, but in this particular instance it had gone splendidly in accordance with her plans. 

Clara Oswald had been brave. 

Clara Oswald had splintered. 

Clara Oswald had burned. 

Burned so many times, died so many times, been half as brilliant as a star so many times... 

It was difficult to believe she was a human, doomed to such an infinitesimally short lifespan. 

And yet in this way, she had lived forever. That was the trick to living forever without going stark raving mad, as it happened. At least, Missy theorized that it must be. The ability to live forever while dying every time it became too much for one person, one body, one soul to withstand. 

Then, of course he – the hero, the Doctor – had recovered the original, his little pilot light, from the ashes. 

She had been put back together after she had served her purpose. She had been brought back to life simply because he couldn't bear to see her go. She would soldier on... 

It was a familiar story, really.

When the Doctor had intervened, Clara Oswald's life had begun to have a different sort of meaning and importance. It was one that much more resembled an ordinary human dream of purpose – life, love, and whispers about making more little humans. How ever much it might be a pity, Missy could not bear her chosen girl – so ill-fitting in her own little place in time, having so much more fuel than wick – falling away into such obscurity. 

At least, that is the narrative she has formed over time about what happened next. It is a dark little fairy story she has constructed, and it is hard to remember if it is true. The handsome prince who is the more wholesome hero of the two dies. Then the Doctor – the hero more to Missy's liking – sweeps in and reminds her that humans have an absurdly unlimited capacity for love, love, love – love of all kinds. And he would certainly like that part. But then, there is Clara – and Missy knows her as well as he does – and she will never stop having the little pull in her head, like a string in a hem fraying loose. 

Missy knows that feeling all too well. The way it will snag and pull and tug, always in the direction of the one who got away. And the universe is a terribly big place to spread a string across, taut and straining. It is romantic and it is terrible, and it is the only kind of love that Missy can bear to think is not entirely too common for them both, as sensible women. 

It is the ending she does not expect. The Doctor falls short in his role, and Clara over-performs in hers. It is a shame, really. And really, it is one that she could have anticipated if she had just been paying ever so slightly more attention. 

To see Clara fall again – so young and in such a moment – it catches her off-guard, really. 

Her orbit around the Doctor grows tighter, closer, and slower. If only there were something she could do, but it really is a tragedy of his own making. One she cannot unravel. Another little monstrous creature, this one of his own making, has condemned their Clara, and quite by accident. This is a story only he could write around those he loves – this insistence on life, on survival, and upon hope however jagged its teeth may be. It is always his undoing. Or rather, it is always theirs. 

Not that Missy has ever cared quite so much before. 

Of course, much of this story is one that comes to her second-hand. She is very good at convincing people that she is someone who needs their assistance and possibly their adoration, and there is quite the trail left behind when one of the players in a story is criminally immortal. It is a very sad story. It is a very dark story, full of wonder. And then, at the end, there is that mad, stupid, and impossible flourish of light. 

She had come closer to his path through the universe, pulling tighter and tighter, searching for him – a step behind, a step ahead, but always only a step away. That is when he performs this last act of madness centered on bringing Clara Oswald back from the dead. Again and again and again, and it might never be enough. 

The poor dear. 

Missy can almost relate. 

But there is a little dying of the light at last. A cooling of the flames, and in the clarity that follows the blinding light, Missy is at last able to find him. 

She has heard and felt rumor of two loose TARDISes in the universe, and not one of them her long lost friend. It is a shame really. But as always, she finds a way to him. 

She trudges across a muddy little landscape, holding her skirts up out of the way. She wants to look at least modestly presentable when attending a wake she does not intend to crash. Only, it is not a wake. Perhaps, in the thought of silly, base wordplay, it is something more like falling asleep. The impossible dream of Clara Oswald at last something he is waking from, at its end. 

If there is an alarm within the TARDIS – his TARDIS,  _ the _ TARDIS for so long – it is very quiet and hushed. The lighting is low and a tiny bit red, but this time she is fairly certain it is not for her. She opens up the door and it creaks, giving way beneath her fingertips as if it had never been quite shut, locked, or sealed. 

Perhaps he is still waiting for her to walk back through the door. She wonders if he had ever worked it out, quite what had happened. The picture of this story they have written together is sketchy towards the end – and she wonders if that is because time is changing or if it is just the Doctor who will. 

He sits on the stairs leading up to a bookshelf. He is leaned forward and over something that just barely reflects some of the light let in by the open door. His thumb moves, and a reverberating, melodic sound rings out. The feeling of the air in the TARDIS console room suggests that perhaps this is not the first such sound to fill the space in a very short amount of time. Another follows, and just like that they flow. 

It is a slow, sad, mournful song. And a little bit bluesy. 

“... I'm not the one who killed her in the end,” Missy says. Her voice has within it some welled up compassion she had not known it would possess in this moment. It also lacks a certain tact or pride that she might have expected. 

Sadly, or luckily, he does not seem to have heard her. 

“Doctor,” she says as she gently closes the door and walks across the floor, steps softly echoing but far beneath the volume of the music he plays. 

He looks up only when she is a few paces from him. She freezes in place and meets his eyes to greet him, hands still clutching tightly to her skirts. 

For a moment, his fingers keep playing out the melody without notice of any change of situation. 

The amplified vibration of the strings seems to draw a chill out of Missy, unanticipated and like nothing else could have. Even at a moment like this. 

“Hello, Missy,” he says. She does not know where this fits into what she was trying to say. 

“And so I ran,” she chortles out, her forced laugh lofty and high and very, very brief. It is discordant. 

“... It's this song I wrote,” the Doctor says, playing a few more chords as if he means to drown out the bitterness of such a sound. 

When she can be heard again, Missy takes one step closer and indulges him to ask. 

“Oh yes? And what's it called?” she asks, much more satisfied with the delivery of this line. So satisfied, in fact, that she comes to sit by him. It is some doing with her skirts about her legs, but finally she rests her arms atop politely bent knees. 

“... I think it's called 'Clara,'” the Doctor recited, as beautiful as any poetry Missy has ever heard. 

Clara Oswald had been intended as a poem – a pretty jot on a line with her self-devised, repeating refrain. That was what Missy had seen. It was what Missy had intended. 

The Doctor had meant to see her through to being a full play. She would finish out each line with beautiful prose. Become something more  _ novel _ – less tragic. 

But in the end, right here at the end of it all – Clara Oswald has become something else. Neither poem nor supernova, neither novel nor never-fading sunlight, Clara Oswald is something written by the three of them and erased by the three of them. Clara Oswald is someone who was born in Blackpool, lived everywhere at once, and never existed. Clara Oswald is a Doctor and Clara Oswald is the master of her own fate. Clara Oswald is – in the same and last breath – a teacher and a tragedy. 

But Missy does not care about all that. Or perhaps she cares a lot. Clara Oswald was only human, after all. 

Missy's cool fingers reach out and drape over the Doctor's. His are warm but in some way that seems artificial, as if perhaps only the playing of the strings is the only thing keeping them active and alive. 

Whatever Clara Oswald was, whatever she was meant to be, whatever she is... 

Clara Oswald is not a story that any of their minds can bear to tell; Clara Oswald is a song. 


End file.
